Category Archives: Rosemary

Tuesday 21st July 2015 – I PASSED …

… the inspection today. Rosemary came by and gave the place her seal of approval.

And so she should have, too. I was awake long before the alarm went off, having my breakfast by the time it finally did, and then, fortified by a pot of strong coffee, I attacked the house.

The attic is tidier now then it has ever been since I have been living in it and there is no doubt about that. The rubbish has been taken out and the composting bin emptied and cleaned.

The bedroom had a good clean-around too and I even managed to bring a little order into the chaos that is the ground floor where I’ve been working. All the tools have been put away, the floor has been swept with all of the sawdust now in a tidy pile, and there are pathways through the tulips where one can tiptoe without breaking one’s neck falling over something.

I even managed to give some attention to the shower room, and I emptied and cleaned out the beichstuhl, even though it didn’t need it, but one can never be too considerate to one’s guests.

All in all, Rosemary was impressed and awarded me half a melon, which went down a treat for pudding this evening. She arrived at 14:00 and was here until 18:25 – some flying visit! I treated myself to a shower too, although I had to wait until 19:45 and the water had cooled down to a delightful 38.5°C – the temperature at 18:26 was a mere 42.0°C – not far off the highest that it has ever been.

I don’t mind visitors as long as I know that they are coming. It’s a good opportunity and incentive for me to tidy up and clean the place. And it does need it sometimes. I ought to pay much more attention to my accommodation.

But I’m surprised that I had the energy to do all of that this morning, seeing as I had been on my travels again. I was in a Ford Cortina estate (they aren’t half featuring quite regularly in my nocturnal ramblings these days) and testing the handbrake by the simple expedient of rolling backwards down a hill on this new housing estate and pulling on the lever. Of course, in this case the handbrake didn’t work and the car gathered speed. The houses at the bottom loomed up rather too rapidly for my liking and so I did a handbrake turn (with no handbrake, of course!) to pull up parallel to the kerb. A tabby kitten came out of the house right by where I was stopped and so I started to stroke it. Then the cat’s owner came out to see what was happening, and it was none other than a girl who has been previously described in these pages as “the one that got away”. Anyway, she invited me in for a coffee and we had a really good nostalgic chat about old times.

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Friday 5th June 2015 – CALIBURN IS BACK

I told you the other day that I had had a phone call to say that Caliburn was ready. And so today, Liz came to pick me up and we cleared off down to St Gervais to rescue him.

I had set the alarm for 07:30 as usual but I was wide awake, up and about at 07:00 without any prompting. I had an early breakfast, I remembered to put the money out for the boulangère and I was good and ready well before 09:00 when Liz was due. I walked down to the end of the lane to meet her.

The bill for Caliburn came to €370, most of which was for a new caliper. And I will say that I have never had brakes as good as this, not even when Caliburn was brand new. This was money well spent, and it makes a total mockery of the €2500 estimate that I had from Barrat Ford of Montlucon.

Liz and I went for a coffee afterwards, where we bumped into someone whom I knew from Sauret football club. We had a lengthy chat about football, as you might expected, but one thing that I did notice was that there were 10 or so people in the bar there and they were all totally pickled – at 10:15 in the morning. It was all quite amusing, not at all aggressive as you might find in the UK, and sitting out on the terrace in the glorious sunshine watching the world go by, you couldn’t be anywhere else except in France. It’s a feeling that you can’t explain to anyone who has never spent any length of time here.

I went round to Rosemary’s afterwards to see how she was getting on. Instead of going by the main road, I went by the old road round the back of St Gervais down the Gorge de la Sioule to Chateauneuf les Bains and then along the road through the gorge to the Pont de Menat. That’s one of the most beautiful roads in the whole of France, I reckon.

We had a good chat and Rosemary even made lunch which was very nice of her. I went off later to do my shopping and was back here by the end of the afternoon.

I’ve spent the evening making a database of all of the music that I’ve played on the rock programmes. This had been getting out of hand so with the new laptop I’ve downloaded an SQL program and I’ve been busy trying to remember everything that I learned when I did my Diploma in Computing at University. You’ve no idea how much I’ve forgotten – or maybe you have. After all, I’m not getting any younger.

As well as that, I’ve been extracting soundbytes from the old time radio programmes that I’ve been downloading. I need to build up my library to use in the rock programme for my “studio guests”

I’ve had the fan on all evening too. The temperature up here reached 33°C this afternoon and outside, it was 36°C at one time. This means that it’s either going to snow tomorrow or else we are going to have a terrific thunderstorm.

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Saturday 29th November 2014 – WHAT A PLEASANT DAY.

We were invited round to Clotilde’s for lunch today. It’s been ages since I’ve seen her so I was quite looking forward to it.

I had a little lie in this morning (slept through the alarms again – whoops!) and then had a nice relaxing morning catching up on a few things that I’ve let go while I was doing this Christmas Special

At 11:30 I cleared off down to Clotilde’s for lunch, and was delighted to see not only Clotilde, Liz, Terry and Rosemary, but also Ingrid who I haven’t seen for years. There was also another couple there who I had never met before.

Clotilde had cooked a really nice vegan lunch, which was very thoughtful of her and then seeing as how the weather was quite reasonable, we went for a walk.

st priest les champs combrailles puy de sancy puy de dome franceFrom Clotilde’s house there’s a good walk through the old quarries of the Gré de lapeize, the stone with which much of St Gervais and St Priest was built.

From the top of the hill at the back, near to where Arno lives, there’s a magnificent view of the town of St Priest les Champs across the valley in the distance, with the Puy de Sancy in the distance.

puy de dome franceFrom there we went round the corner and up to the top of the next hill, and from there was a lovely view of the Puy de Dome in the distance.

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of it. And I’m glad that we are in late autumn because the absence of leaves on the trees at this time of the year add some different kind of dimension to the photo.

This evening I was down at Pionsat for the football. Pionsat’s 2nd XI were playing Teilhet. And despite the strength of the team that Pionsat put out (and there won’t be a stronger team than this on the field for the 2nd XI), they really struggled and the attack offered absolutely nothing at all. And that’s a surprise considering the fact that in the 8 games to date, they’ve scored 31 goals. An utterly impotent offering.

They ended up beating the Goatslayers 1-0, with the goal coming from a corner. The ball was headed out but only as far as blond Frederic on the edge of the area who put everything into it that he had, including the kitchen sink.

Still, a win is a win, as anyone will tell you, and the top 4 clubs, including Piosat, have now broken well clear of the pack.

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Thursday 27th November 2014 – ANOTHER DAY …

… when I’ve hardly set foot out of doors today.

Mind you, I’ve had a really good bash at this radio programme and I reckon that I’ve broken the back of it. There’s well over 30kb of text now and that in theory may well be enough. However, I need some up my sleeve to cope with any unforeseen eventualities, and there are a few other things that need to be added.

As well as that, it all needs to be tidied up and made into something resembling a dialogue, and that I can do tomorrow. But it’ll certainly be something if I can finish this hour-long programme for tomorrow.

But I was certainly carried away with what I was doing today. I didn’t realise how late it was and I ended up having my lunch at about 17:30 – and thus no evening meal. That’s the penalty that you pay for being absorbed in your work.

And Rosemary rang me up in the morning too. She fancied a good chat so it was quite lucky that I was up and about at the usual time of morning, just for a change just recently.

I’m off to bed too now, something of an early night which will make a change for just recently. Another good day on this hour-long Christmas special should see it finished off.

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Thursday 13th November 2014 – I HAD A DAY OFF TODAY

Rosemary had been talking about going to the new IKEA down at Clermont Ferrand and so we had decided to go there together. Today was the day, so I was up and about quite early and went to pick her up.

We arrived there at about 10:20 and while IKEA is easy to see, it’s nothing like as easy to find the entrance to the car park. Nevertheless, after a mystery tour around the Michelin factory there we managed it.

I was hoping to be there much earlier but it would have been a waste of effort as the place doesn’t open until 10:00. I’ll have to bear that in mind. And who should we bump into there but another Eric whom we know. He’s the presenter of the chanson francaise programmes on Radio Arverne and they are recorded after our sessions there. Radio work doesn’t pay, of course, and so he’s working there at IKEA to pay the bills.

Rosemary vowed before we went in that she wasn’t going to buy anything. Of course I have heard this a thousand times before and this time was no different that any other. I spent about €40,about half of which went on a new dinner service. It was part of the reduced goods on offer and it certainly looks the business. I’m quite impressed with it as it is exactly what I was seeking.

We had lunch and then went to the Auchan to swap a defective temperature gauge and to do a pile of shopping, as well as buying some diesel as it was only €1:21 per litre. The Auchan doesn’t sell the light green bottles of gas so we had to go to the Carrefour at Menetrol. I think I mentioned that the gas that powers the cooker in the verandah is getting low and with the temperature still quite reasonable and with no fire up here yet, I’m still cooking down there.

I rescued my roofing ladder from Rosemary and we had a coffee and spent a good couple of hours putting the world to rights.

There won’t be much done tomorrow either as I have several errands to run and a new toy to pick up. I wish I could have a good few weeks non-stop on this perishing house.

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Friday 7th November 2014 – I’VE BEEN REALLY POPULAR TODAY.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had so many visitors.

It started off with my friends who were staying at the Queue de Milan. They had come by especially to see the house and the set-up of solar panels and wind turbines, as well as all of the other things that I have on the go here. They had the full guided tour and explanation and it was bizarre that, over a lengthy distance in both time and geographical location, our ideas have been following along similar routes.

As they were preparing to leave, Rosemary turned up for a chat. She’d been to make an appointment for the dentist and was told that she could have one that same afternoon, so it was hardly worth her going home.

We had a coffee and spent hours putting the world to rights and then she cleared off I made myself some lunch. By this time it was late in the afternnon and I didn’t feel much like restarting work so I had an early finish. I reckoned that I had earned it after my exertions of Wednesday night and Thursday.

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Thursday 30th October 2014 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… garden fire today. But to be honest, it was really the same one as yesterday, with a lot more fuel added to it.

Outside the house, the tidying up is done as much as I can do for the moment and it really is a great improvement on how it was before. That, at least, is noticeable. And where I couldn’t reach with the lawnmower or the brush cutter, I’ve poured a load of weedkiller over. That’s something that I’ve always been trying to avoid, of course, but sometimes it is necessary, especially as time is something of an issue right now.

Having dealt with that, I’ve been in the downhill lean-to. I’ve done some (but not too much) tidying up in there now and I can move around again. Dealing with that properly and comprehensively is another mediul-term goal of mine, and that depends upon what the winter this year is going to bring us.

This afternoon, I spent a considerable amount of time on the telephone. Firstly, I had to call the UK and my bank there to find out why a banking transaction hadn’t gone through. After what can best be called “a frank exchange of views”, this transaction might go through properly now, and there will be some news about this on these pages in early course if all goes according to plan.

The second call was to Canada and to my niece and her husband. This is something else that is going to involve a considerable financial outlay, but my best estimate is that it will pay for itself in just three voyages to North America, and I’m looking to reduce my outlay in this respect seeing as how it’s becoming a regular thing, these voyages. And there will be more of this anon too..

Once those were out of the way, I spent a delightful afternoon downstairs on the ground floor of the house tidying up all of that, and it’s now back to the pristine condition of how it was in the Spring. That left me just ebnough time to make a start on tidying the first floor where the bedroom will be.

As it went dark I had phone calls from Terry and from Rosemary. I’m exceedingly popular these days. I can’t be feeling myself these days.

And quite right too. It’s a disgusting habit.

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Thursday 21st August 2014 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… I’ll be at 34,000 feet. I hope that the aeroplane will be too!

And I can’t wait to go either – I need a break. Especially after today. It took an hour and a half to sort out the difficult part of the wiring issues. The problem was relatively straightforward but it didn’t half take some fixing. What had happened was that when we must have fed the huge cable through the piping, the pipe had come away from its mounting and dropped down through the floor some way. Pushing the pipe back up had wedged it underneath the floor and trapped the wires.

Of course, now that the plasterboard has been put on the wall in the shower room, it’s not possible to reach the pipe from underneath. Consequently I had to drill out the floor from above and chisel part of it away. That freed the wires off but the insulation on the one that had been trapped under the floor was damaged so I had to wrap it in insulation tape. It’s a good job that I noticed.

But this huge armoured cable going through the pipe – I can’t understand that. Why did I choose that? Two strands of 16mm cable takes up much less room than that and will be much better at carrying the surplus current upstairs when I finally manage to move the immersion heater up here when the bedroom is finished. Consequently I pulled the cable right out.

It still wasn’t as easy as it might have been to pass this cable through the pipe but anyway, there it is. And there’s plenty of room for 2 strands of 16mm cable as well as one or two others if necessary.

Before I could restart work after lunch, Rosemary came round and we pulled up the onions and garlic. And what a crop! I’ve never ever been so lucky as to have had a crop like this. It seems that this wet weather has done some good somewhere.

That took us until 19:30 and I was looking forward then to coming upstairs and tidying up because it is a total disaster here what with me trying to pack as well as having to clear part of the attic to access this cabling.

But it’s not to be. I’ve had a phone call that means that either tomorrow or Saturday, Caliburn and I will have to take the big trailer on a rather long run. Consequently I had to empty out Caliburn and rescue the trailer from the undergrowth where it lives. Of course, there was a light out so I had to fix that too and that took me right up to 21:30 when it was too dark to do any more and I didn’t feel like tidying up at that time of night.

Tomorrow I’ll have to finish off all of the stuff for Radio Anglais if we aren’t going until Saturday. The radio stuff can’t be left and so for the moment this is the priority task.

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Sunday 17th August 2014 – OHHH LOOK AT THAT!

new potatoes harvested les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, look at that indeed.

Roselary came around this afternoon and so we decided to pull up the new potatoes. In fact we ended up pulling up all of them as the lates seemed to be ready too, and this is what we ended up with after about 4 hours of uprooting.

There’s about 20 litres of potatoes there and and that’s a lot of potatoes, much more than I was expecting and much more than I usually have. Clearly the wet summer is having something to do with this.

Rosemary stayed chatting until almost 20:00 and that made a pleasant evening, even if it was a little cool.

But not as cool as yesterday evening – the temperature dropped to an astonishing (for mid-August) low of 9.1°C, and if you think that this is bad, then Friday night’s temperature was an even lower 8.2°C. For mid-August, these figures are unbelievable. I haven’t seen anything quite like this.

This morning I finally finished this mega-backup. It’s all on a big external drive, a portable hard drive and (minus the photos) on a 64GB memory stick. That should keep me going if anything happens.

I’ve also prepared an old portable hard drive and another 64GB memory stick.They have the old films that I downloaded from archive.org and also the old-time radio programmes that I like to listen to. There are directories for the photos, the dictaphone notes and the text that I’ll be typing.

One thing that I’ll try is a 64GB SD card too. The trouble with portable hard drives is that they eat into the power supply of the laptop and, of course, with moving parts they will use a good part of the power. Solid-state is therefore the answer, hence a memory stick, and I reckon that an SD card might be even better in this respect.

We shall see.

So tomorrow, I’ll go back in the garden, churn over the beds agaon to see if we missed anoy more spudes, then hoe and rake tham and finally cover them up with black plastic to keep out the weeds.

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Sunday 3rd August 2014 – I HAD A LOVELY …

… afternoon out today. Rosemary rang up this morning for a good chat and so we agreed to meet up at St Eloy at 15:00.

At St Eloy we went to the cafe by the little beach at the lake and ended up staying there chatting until 20:00, such is the way of things. But it was lovely to get out and about for a change and the weather wasn’t quite as bad as it might have been.

Rosemary wasn’t the only one to phone up either. I had Julie on the phone for ages having a lengthy chat this morning too.

I had something of a restless night last night and was awake quite early. When I finally got out of bed it was only 08:40 and that was rather disappointing – so much for my nice Sunday lie-in.

After breakfast I finished off the tourism part of the Radio Anglais programmes and then hunted down some topics for the main text. I wrote two small articles that might do for three weeks or so – there’s planty of stuff in store that will fill in for the rest of the time.

I’ve also found another good topic that I can expand upon and if I do that next weekend I’ll be ahead again, which is where I want to be. I need to get ahead as much as I can with my impending voyage to the colonies.

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Tuesday 24th June 2014 – IT DID CLEAR UP …

… even though it didn’t look much like it when we started. Damp, claggy and overcast.

Nevertheless I was at my task early and first job after brzakfast was to empty the beichstuhl as I was to be having visitors. I also steam-cleaned the kitchen in the verandah and unblocked the sink there – I need to have the place looking something like. I followed that by working on the web pages again – getting back into my normal routine.

After lunch, the weather picked up and it looked quite nice. Rosemary turned up as planned and we set about a couple of the raised beds. Rosemary weeded four and I weeded almost three and I do wonder about my technique because Rosemary’s weeding looks absolutly perfect whereas mine looks a total mess. I wish I knew what her secret was.

We had a long chat afterwards and at about 19.15 Rosemary went home and that was that.

Tomorrow I won’t be doing much as I’m off on the road tomorrow night.

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Thursday 19th June 2014 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY

I mentioned yesterday that I had to go to Montlucon today for some more grillage for the concrete that’s coming tomorrow.

As it happened, Rosemary rang up and so it came to pass that we met up this morning at the Texaco garage outside Montaigut and she came with me to Montlucon.

We didn’t spend too long in Brico Depot but I bought the grillage, some more pylons, a few other bits and pieces and so on. I now have everything that I need for tomorrow, especially as Terry has remembered to put the bolt cutters into his van.

Rosemary and I then went to the garden centre and a few more shops before lunch and then afterwards, with the weather being so nice we went for a walk around the lake at Premilhat, stopping for a cold drink half-way round.

We came back via the Gorge de la Cher and, strange as it is to say it, at the tinky village of St Therence, miles of the beaten track and far from anywhere, there was a barrage. Half a dozen gendarmes, a dog handler and a dog were stopping all of the traffic, namely about one vehicle and four cows per hour. I don’t mind these at all, especially these days as Caliburn and I are all totally legal, but it’s still totally bewildering as to why they should have a barrage in such an out-of-the-way place.

Back home, I finished off the shuttering and backfilled with soil and stones ready to lay the grillage. But what a weird place to have a barrage.

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Friday 6th June 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… I was awake at 06:00 (and I don’t mean as in not gone to bed yet)? Anyway, so I was this morning, despite having been on my travels during the night.

And it was all to no avail as well because when I pulled into Brico Depot at 06:55, 5 minutes before opening time, there was already a packed car park and a queue of about 40 people at the door. And then at 07:00 they wheeled out the 4-wheel 1.5 tonne 4-wheeled close-coupled trailers for sand and gravel, that were on special offer at just €799. There was a total of 4 trailers and so that was that. I, and another 30-odd people, had had a wasted journey.

Not quite wasted though because I filled up Caliburn with everything that I might need for the next stage of the concreting (because there will be one) except for the 100mm breeze blocks, which I forgot. I also did a round of shopping, to save on going out tomorrow and at the Auchan I bumped into the Megemonts – a couple from Virlet. M Megemont is President of the Virlet Historical Society and mme Megemont is on the local council so I took the opportunity to ask her to send me anything that might be interesting for Radio Anglais.

I was back here for 15:00 for my butty and it’s clearly a case that Rosemary has a spy camera here as she phoned up the moment I set my foot in the door.

It was 20:00 when I went back outside to unload Caliburn. We had the hottest day of the year to daye and it was not possible to work outside. The temperature today reached 34.50C today.

So now I have the fan on here – the first time this year – and I’m off to bed in a minute. I hzve to start on the Radio Anglais programmes tomorrow.

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Saturday 31st May 2014 – I WENT TO MONTLUCON TODAY

And I wasn’t alone either for Rosemary came with me. We met up at the Total garage at Montaigut, but first port of call was back here. Rosemary needed a new worktop for the two cupboards that she had bought and although Brico Depot no longer stocked it, it was exactly the same as what I had bought for my house and I have tons of it around here. I could certainly spare a sheet of it.

After that we blitzed the shops – I did my usual round and Rosemary did hers. As well as that, we went around a few furniture shops as Rosemary needs some things for her cottage.

I loaded up Caliburn at Brico Depot with a pile of breeze blocks and some metal pylons for next week’s work around here, and I bought a two hook from Espace Emeraude. The Kubota came with just a stalk for ring-coupling trailers whereas my trailers are ball couplings so I needed a stalk with the ball on the end.

Rosemary bought lunch and on the way home we stopped at Neris-les-Bains for a cold drink. it was the start of the theatre season there and so we were serenaded by an Opera singer, just by way of a change.

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Tuesday 20th May 2014 – YAWN

Yes, I had a bad night last night. I was editing sound clips and the like when I happened to glance at the time – 03:45.

It ws about 04:00 when I finally went to bed and i had a very disturbed night, but I still managed to wake up and be out of bed before the cacophony of alarms finished at 08:00.

However it ruined my day quite considerably. I couldn’t concentrate on my website work and in the end rang up Rosemary for a chat.

Outside, I dug over the two potato beds, fitted the new raised bed and then planted all of my potatoes.

I checked over the seeds in the small greenhouse and I’ve planted some more lettuce and leeks. Nothing much survived my two weeks away. I then watered all of the plants (that’s why we’ve had a torrential rainstorm tonight) and soaked everything in the greenhouse.

Only a short blog as I’m shattered and now I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

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